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A surreal, sometimes slapstick, comedy about the constraints of a rigid social hierarchy. It could be adapted as a children’s picture book (and has been: The Nose), or perhaps a Monty Python sketch, although in its full form, it’s a satire about rank.

A barber finds a customer’s nose in his freshly-baked morning loaf of onion bread and tries to dispose of it. Meanwhile, that customer awakes and is shocked to discover that his nose is missing, so he tries to find it. When he does, it is the size of a man, is wearing a uniform of superior rank to his own, and asserts its right to independent existence.


Image: Cover of "The Nose": A Stylistic and Critical Companion to Nikolai Gogol’s Story (which I’ve not read)

I thought of all the nasal idioms in English: toffee-nosed, turning one’s nose up, being nosey, putting someone’s nose out of joint, and apparently there are similar ones in Russian:
“‘Torn off� (if it is too curious), ‘lifted up� (if you have a high opinion of yourself), or ‘hung up� (with obvious defeat and failure). By the 19th century, there has been an extensive literature in Russian prose dedicated to nose references� (from ).
Indeed, Gogol makes lots of references to noses in The Squabble, and was apparently teased for his own nose.


I’ve reviewed four Gogol short stories, including this, in a GR review, HERE.